Economics Seminar (2020-11)

Topic: The Contribution of Market Power to Wage Inequality (with Aseem Patel and Lawrence Warren)

Speaker: Jan Eeckhout, UPF Barcelona

Time: June 23, Tuesday. 14:30p.m.- 16:00p.m. Beijing Time

Location: Microsoft Teams Online Conference Room

Abstract:

We investigate how market power affects wage inequality. Market power is driven by the market structure of the goods market as well as in the distribution of firm-specific technology. We ask how these contribute to the rise in the Skill Premium, the premium of the average college wage relative over the average non-college wage. We estimate the firm-specific technology as well as the market structure and find that the increase in market power contributes over 70% to the rise in the skill premium.

Introduction:

Jan Eeckhout is ICREA-GSE research professor of Economics at UPF Barcelona. He has teaching and research interests in macroeconomics, with a special emphasis on the labor market. He studies the macroeconomic implications of market power, as well as unemployment and inequality.

His work has featured in the media, including The Economist, The Wall Street Journal, Financial Times, New York Times, Vox News and Bloomberg. His papers are published in top economics journals, the American Economic Review, Econometrica, the Quarterly Journal of Economics, the Journal of Political Economy, the Review of Economic Studies, and he has received support for his research from numerous government grants, including funding from the National Science Foundation (US) and the European Research Council (Starting and Advanced Grants), as well as private grants. He has advised over 40 Ph.D. students who have placed in academic positions from Yale to Chicago and from Beijing to Canberra, as well as in non-academic positions.

Jan Eeckhout has been a tenured professor at the University of Pennsylvania and at University College London. He has also been the Louis A. Simpson Visiting Professor at Princeton University, he has been a visiting professor at NYU Stern and he has been a visiting scholar at MIT. At UPF he has been the chairman of the Department of Economics and Business. He has been editor of the International Economic Review and is currently on the editorial board of the Review of Economic Dynamics and the Journal of Economic Theory, and is past editorial board member of the Journal of the European Economic Association. He is a fellow of the Econometric Society and of the European Economic Association, and he is a member of the Academia Europaea. He received his Ph.D. in Economics from the London School of Economics in 1998.

More information: //www.janeeckhout.com/wp-content/uploads/CV_Jan_Eeckhout.pdf

Your participation is warmly welcomed.